I mean, the "corrupt politician strikes a deal with the Decepticon" angle could have been used so well, but instead it's wasted on a story that relies entirely on the notion that the entire human race is fecking stupid to work. "Carefully examining the evidence" apparently means "not even bothering to watch the whole fecking tape" - and that just being one of the problems with that story.

I'm assuming the corrupt politician used Invisibility Spray to make the entire US government and legal system disappear so that the mayor of a small town in Oregon would somehow inherit the authority to sentence people to interstellar exile.

the mayor of a small town in Oregon would somehow inherit the authority to sentence people to interstellar exile.

Point of order, it's never established as Oregon in the cartoon so he could actually have been mayor of somewhere really important. Based on a close study of all the geographical evidence in the episodes (a volcano by itself rather than in a range, in a place no one would ever notice a giant spaceship sticking out the side of it in thousands of years of humans occupying America, in a desert except when there's a forest outside, next to the sea except when it isn't) I can conclusively prove that the Ark is slap bang in the middle of Madeup****ingnowheresstate.

In fairness on the invisibility spray, the Autobots could have taken measures against it so as to make it impossible for the Decepticons to do the same again. Like, for example, reprogramming Teletran to tell them when invisible Decepticons are in the Ark and doing things to their recharge slabs rather than waiting till it's asked about it afterwards.

Like, for example, reprogramming Teletran to tell them when invisible Decepticons are in the Ark and doing things to their recharge slabs rather than waiting till it's asked about it afterwards.

Teletraan-1 really is ****ing weird. They've got this omniscient computer with its own spy satellite, which is more than capable of sorting out the week's plot within twenty seconds... and the only time they ever seem to remember is when Chip pipes up with "well I know, why don't we ask Teletraan-1".

Chip Chase should be Autobot leader.

While I understand the logic behind Metrodome's DVD ordering, it does end up being really ****ing bizarre that the season 2 credits are 90% characters who don't turn up until over a dozen episodes in. Imagine watching this with a child. "Who's that? Who's that? Why aren't they in it? Why are they still not in it? When are they in it?"

The broadcast order of the episodes isn't much better for getting to the new characters quickly is it? IIRC season 2 just sort of stumbles into life as if they had a whole load of episodes left over from season 1 rather the Big Event/New Toy Promotions of every other season, even Rebirth.

Oddly it's also the only season that doesn't end with an big Event episode that could also potentially serve as the Last Ever Episode. Presumably because they knew the film was coming and couldn't be ****ed to do anything better than BOT to wrap the year up.

Oddly it's also the only season that doesn't end with an big Event episode that could also potentially serve as the Last Ever Episode. Presumably because they knew the film was coming and couldn't be ****ed to do anything better than BOT to wrap the year up.

Well I for one remember being very emotionally invested in whatever it was that happened to Brawl in that episode.

Sometimes think the Japanese had the right idea in just mixing seasons 1 and 2 together. I think their series ended with The Ultimate Doom, which kind of makes sense though it completely borks Countdown to Extinction.

Double-checking that also reminded me that they were sensible enough to ditch Attack of the Autobots from the airing order entirely so yay Japan.

You'd have thought with the film coming and with it being well on the road to being finished by the time the later season 2 episodes went into production they'd have done a bit more to smoothly mesh into it. Not in a way that would depend on seeing the film to make sense (mind, they kick off season 3 with a story that's a big **** off to everyone who didn't see the film, there's what, a ten second voiceover to try and explain the drastic change in status quo?) or might affect things being shown out of order in reruns too much. Just simple things. Do a story where the Autobots establish bases on the moons, end the season with a two parter where the Protectobots are introduced properly in an Ark Duty style story about building Autobot City.

Just small things that wouldn't be intrusive to the overall flow of the show but would make that transition less drastic. There are a lot of places where the second year feels completely rudderless.

There's the story I heard David Wise tell (on a Moonbase 2 interview I think) when he talked about coming in to do an interview with Flint Dille about writing for season 3 and how surprised he was when Dille asked him "What stories do you want to tell?" because he thought it was a ludicrous thing to be trying to do stories you have an investment in on Transformers.

Now, he tells this as an example of Where Things Went Wrong with season 3 and it's supposed to make Dille look bad. One of the show's most prolific (and best, sadly) writers thought it was silly the script editor wanted to try and get the authors to give a toss. There's everything wrong with what was going on behind the scenes in a nutshell really.

Except Wheeljack demonstrated that the metal detectors DID detect Cybertronians by triggering them with his hand, and since they were triggered by contact, Nightbird avoided them by scaling the ceiling instead.

Maybe they only detected Cybertronian alloys, but they did make a point of showing Nightbird avoiding them.

Obviously I remembered that Starscream was both pretending to be Optimus Prime and also one of the Decepticons who was saving the day, but I'd clean forgotten that there was actually no point in the narrative where they could possibly have filmed the unmasking.

Oh, Sunbow. You so craycray.

Of course the big quest is, given that it happens in Central City, why the Autobots needed to be about in the first place. Surely The Flash could have stopped the Decepticons. Unless he was too busy dealing with Backwards Flash or Negative Flash or Naughty Flash or whatever his nemesis is called. Corporal Chilly? I don't know. All these Dark Horse villains are the same to me.

Obviously I remembered that Starscream was both pretending to be Optimus Prime and also one of the Decepticons who was saving the day, but I'd clean forgotten that there was actually no point in the narrative where they could possibly have filmed the unmasking.

I'm beginning to wonder if that was the writers' plan all along; write a story so terrible that you'd be too distracted to notice all the usual errors!

Okay, so the new characters in season 2 are among those Transformers affected by the millions-of-years of exposure to Earth's radiation in Desertion of the Dinobots.

Which basically means the only possible explanation for where they came from is that they were being kept in a cupboard for the whole of season 1 and, at some point off camera, somebody accidentally opened it.

I mean why wouldn't you lock Warpath up in a cupboard and forget about him?